To most people they are simply bakers, but to you and I they are biscuit technologists — you might even call them pioneers — maybe pie-oneers. They are they people at Greggs the Bakers who come up with the new treats which are periodically launched upon their luscious shelves. Damn, that is an extended epithet, but it's true.

As a fan of Greggs, I try most of the new products, even if they don’t appeal to me. I live in a city in mainland Britain so I don’t have to travel far to get to Greggs — there are two within five minutes of my home, and that total increases the more time I allow myself. There are at least five Greggs the Bakers I can think of within ten minutes of my home.

Meet the Caramel and Pecan Momento

OK, the naming of food, particularly sweet treats, has always been of great interest to me, and so I was fascinated by this new form — the Momento.

How the Caramel and Pecan Momento Shelves up Among the Dainties

A momento, I am surmising, is in this instance a biscuit — however, implicit in the idea of the Caramel and Pecan Momento is that the ‘moment’ of consumption will be all. What’s odd about this is that Greggs is a no frills type of place, patronised by no-frills type of people. So when requesting this item I was loathe to call it by its name and like a coward I asked for ‘a caramel and pecan biscuit’. Despite the ingenuity in the naming, I don’t think the momento was selling well, and this may have been reluctance on people’s part to request it by name.

How does it taste? I would call it 75 pence worth of sugary goodness. Obviously somewhere down the line, the biscuit technologists at Greggs have noticed that pecan and maple syrup have often been combinbed to great effect, and have riffed on this.

Transportation May Cause a Luscious Leaking

In getting the momento home, I will report that the caramel actually leaked out of the bottom of the shortbread, which was an amazingly sticky experience, but one that I enjoyed. The biscuit had to be prized away from the bag, and the bag had to be licked.

As for the rest, I don’t particularly like shortbread and so I was just trying this for novelty, but the caramel was top grade, the nuts kept to an absolute minimum, and the overall architecture was fairly new to me — a traditional round of shortbread with a well in the centre, into which the sauce.

My final impression was that if it were not for the supremely fine caramel, this creation would be fairly dull — the shortbread by itself would not win any prizes, being slightly chewey. But there was so much caramel piled in there, much more than you would imagine from an initial survey of the treat, that this turned out to be pretty terrific. It’s possibly due to the immense amnounts of caramel that the leak occurred, but that can only be good, and even looking at this, one would expect a little trouble in eating it. For coffee time, you must try this at least once.

As for that huge amount of caramel? Greggs are generous like that, and when something is worth tasting, they always do pile it on.